Pakistan: Around 50 arrested in 5-year-old's gang-rape case in Lahore

LAHORE: Police have taken at least 50 suspects into custody in the brutal rape case of a five-year-old girl in Lahore.

"We have taken at least 50 suspects, including some boys of the victim's family, into custody and are interrogating," a senior official of Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) told on the condition of anonymity.

"Those taken into custody also include vagabonds of the locality and some labourers. Two police teams have been working on the case day and night and we are very much positive to arrest the culprit(s) soon," he said.

The CIA official further informed that the investigating teams are also taking help of the police of other districts to arrest those men who were present near the victim's family's residence in Mughalpura when the incident took place. Police have started conducting DNA tests to identify the suspects.

"We are still looking for the main accused. We have also taken some suspects into custody after observing CCTV footages," said Lahore police chief Chaudhry Shafique.

Meanwhile, local MP Hamza Shahbaz, son of Punjab's chief minister Shabaz Sharif, said that law enforcement agencies have got an important clue in the case.

He said 'hectic efforts' are underway to arrest all of the accused, though the number of perpetrators cannot be ascertained at the moment.

A Police official, Jamil Khan, was suspended and subsequently arrested for releasing four suspects after taking bribe from them.

The girl, the youngest of nine siblings, was playing outside her house at Ghausia Colony in Mughalpura - a thickly populated impoverished neighbourhood - on Thursday evening when she went missing.

Her family made announcements through loudspeakers in mosques and carried out a search but were unable to trace her.

They also approached Mughalpura police station but officials refused to register a complaint.

A security guard found the girl lying unconscious with blood stains on her clothes in a forested area near Sir Ganga Ram Hospital on Friday morning.

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